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LAWRENCE — The KU Public Safety Office, Emergency Management Department is hosting a “lunch and learn” lecture series about interdisciplinary issues within disasters and emergencies. KU professors and scholars will share their fresh perspectives and pivotal research.

The first session will feature Katie Treadwell, associate director of the Office of First-Year Experience, who will present “Organizational Learning in the Aftermath of Disaster.” The event will take place from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. Feb. 27.

When the worst-case scenario occurs, Treadwell says, emergency management procedures typically provide short-term tactics for complex and long-term campus trauma. Often, campus administrators and law enforcement officials formally resolve crises fairly quickly, but students, faculty and staff may carry lingering trauma for weeks, months or years. Higher education institutions that engage in intentional learning from crisis situations increase their capacity to serve the campus community as well as foster a stronger ability to engage in future crisis prevention, planning, response and recovery.

Treadwell will offer insights from higher education leaders who helped their campus navigate high-profile disasters as well as opportunities to consider how the inclusion of individual and organizational learning strategies may be applied to crisis planning and response.

Additional discussions will take place at 12:30 p.m. March 29 and April 27. All events will take place in the Crossroads Room, level four of the Kansas Union. Students, staff and faculty are welcome.

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